August 14, 2008
Serving God or Your Brother...
In Christian publishing occasionally a wanna-be-published writer will submit his work to an editor with the caveat, ‘God told me to write this book. He gave me the words to say and it’s perfect’. Editors tactfully back away from such a manuscript because they aren’t about to edit God’s work. Similarly, in recent years one of the phrases I keep hearing from church leaders is, ‘we [elders] serve God’. You’ve got to admit that that phrase is a great conversation stopper for anyone questioning the direction the church is heading. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought when you serve others you are serving God. Paul brings our acts of serving into perspective when he says, “The God who made the world and everything in it… is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.” (Acts 17:24-25 NIV)
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Gail;
-----Thank you. I never thought to mix that scripture into my thoughts. In fact, it has hung around just beyond my memory, otherwise it may have mixed in itself. Although you are literarily correct in writing, “…that phrase is a great conversation stopper for anyone questioning the direction the church is heading,” I know certainly that you are wrong literally. What I know you need to write to also be correct literally is, “…that phrase is a great conversation stopper for anyone except Steve Corey questioning the direction the church is heading,” and I will easily claim the Lord has many more children who will not stop questioning at such an unscriptural claim to be serving God.
-----It is evident when one is serving God, for when God is being served His children are being served. (Matt 25:40) Now, it is understandable if some of His children are not served in His church by error. But it is quite different to refuse service to certain brethren just because what they need is a bit different than the direction the leaders have chosen for the church. Just because the mouth can form words such as, “I serve God, not man,” does not mean reality turns and bows down to those words. The direction of the church is to serve the brethren without partiality. So, reality remains humbled to His Words, as Paul wrote, “Let God be true though every man be false…” (Rom 3:4 RSV). The only way to make man’s words true is to make man’s words match His reality.
-----I believe there are people around who can easily see when man’s reality is not matching His Word. It does not take a great deal of study and practice to notice when someone is falsely claiming that it does. Among those people who can discern are some who find public words mismatched with public realities to be great conversational pieces about the direction of the church, whether or not the public speakers of the words hold themselves out to be special doers of God’s deeds. As far as I am concerned, when someone else is being significantly hurt by such twisted directions, speaking out publicly becomes a prerequisite to the maintenance of the truthful state of my claim to be living in love. So I do.
Love,
Steve Corey
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